Private Investigator Services

One of the first Private Investigators in recorded history was Eugene Francois Vidocq. He was a French man who was famous for introducing a number of new investigative techniques such as ballistics, record keeping and even plaster casts of shoe impressions. His main tasks consisted of performing what is mostly done by today's police. This included searching and arresting thieves and even acting as riot police during labor disputes.

Many people would hire PIs in order to perform police services because they assumed that PIs would perform better work in exchange for money.

Times have changed and so did the services performed by the Private Investigators or "Professional Investigators" as many of them wish to be called.

Here is a list of top services performed by Private Investigators

- Computer Forensics Work: This often involves tracking computer activities of a partner, by installing keylogging software in order to gain access to the partners email. Often done to prove the partner is cheating.

- Corporate Investigators/Industrial Espionage: Discovering trade secrets by pretending they work for a large corporation's human resource department. PIs would invite employees from the competitor's firm and offer high salary increases. Once the employee is convinced he or she is going to get hired it becomes easy to extract trade secrets.

This is an illegal practice, but unfortunately certain private detectives have been associated with it, probably due to their advanced social skills. Corporate Investigators are also often hired as freelancers to discover and point out a company's vulnerabilities for information leaks.

- Due diligence investigation: PI would investigate a specific person to uncover their background. This is often performed by large corporations before hiring employees.

- Protection of intellectual property and trade secrets: Companies often hire Private Investigators when they discover bootlegged copies of their merchandise. The private detective would then perform a full investigation to discover the source of these counterfeit goods. Once the source is discovered he contacts the proper governments authorities in order to shut down the counterfeit productions. This type of investigation is highly valued. A company's reputation is at risk when low-quality copies of products reach their customers.

- Process serving: Large amount of detectives perform personal delivery of summons and other documents to parties involved in a legal disputes. It's similar to registered mail in function. The document is handed directly to a person by the PI. This serves as undeniable proof that the person has become aware of the legal proceedings put forth against him or her.

As times change Private Investigators become more and more sophisticated with their methods. One thing is for sure, we will always need services performed by PIs in our modern society.

Martin Vidocq is a Private Investigator who started his career in 1998. He uses advanced techniques such as IP search and specializes in computer forensics. He is also the owner of "vidocq investigator directory" which is a free on-line detective directory.